This is my quest to use Woman's Day magazine as a guide to living a better life, month to month, by incorporating as many of the articles, recipes, and advertising into my life as possible. My goal is to grow as a person, discover more about myself and others, and test my limits, boundaries, and abilities.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Meat: Long and Cut

Anyone can write blogs about recipes. I, however, teach you something in the process. Unless, of course, you are completely clueless like myself and have cooking skills out the proverbial wazoo. As I made dinner Saturday night I learned more than a few things while preparing mygingery grilled flank steak with cous cous salad.

The first thing you should know is that buying organic, humanely raised animals is worth it. This is why I buy my meat at Bedford Avenue Meat Shop. You should also realize that if you don't eat beef on a regular basis it can upset your stomach in a manner which is unpleasant to others.

(rubbed with fresh ginger)

Secondly, all this cooking and baking is truly an educational experience. I feel like I am becoming the person at the family gathering who will automatically know how to make the pudding from scratch or throw together a Macgyver inspired dressing at Thanksgiving using only baking powder and the dirt from Uncle Darrell's left shoe.

While cooking flank steak in the pan (I was only able to get a grill as of today) I found myself wondering,"What IS flank steak? Is it the side of the cow? The leg?"

Flank steak, I discovered, is actually a long, flat cut from the abdominal muscles of the cow. It's what they use for London broil and fajitas. Now if I want to make London broil or fajitas I will know what kind of cut to buy. Of course, if my friend Chef Preston Cravey was in town, I could have just looked at his arm since he has an entire cow tattoo with all the different types of meat.

I would now like to take the time to discuss orange zest. You can actually zest an entire orange and keep it on hand for any number of things. I would have never imagined such a thing but the rumors are true. For this recipe, the zest went in the cous cous and the orange juice was used as a coating for the steak:

I love this whole use-stuff-for-a-recipe-and-then-save-the-leftovers-for-something-else-so-you-don't-waste-food-and-money thing too. I even cut a few slices of orange and put it in my homemade lemonade which I am now able to make at any time because of a recipe I memorized last year.

And I've always appreciated Kroger, but we were extra pleased that we not only found the cous cous there that we couldn't find at Walmart, but also that it was wheat free for Erik. God bless Lundberg, who even provides coupons on their web site. We love their risotto as well.

We are enjoying this recipe journey. We also feel so much better that we are making local choices and investing time and money into our health.

Oh, and please make up a clever name for this recipe. Not to be redundant, but I'm far too tired.